Nothing but the Pub

(Written a few years back but damn, it seems like yesterday I was laughing with the Tree of Knowledge in the morning!) Like a select few world leading centres of arts and learning, Augathella in Queensland has had more than one name change in its history. The Big Apple started out as New Amsterdam and then switched to New Orange before it became New York City. Walt Whitman wrote of NYNY: “ There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man’s bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die”. In 330 AD Byzantium was renamed Constantinople and stayed that way for 1600 years before becoming Istanbul, the only city to sit astride two continents. Fatih Sultan Mehmet said of this city, once the second largest in the world: "İstanbul is a magical seal which unites Europe and Asia since the ancient times. Without a doubt, Istanbul is certainly the...

When I get to The Homebush Hotel at Penarie, there’s no bugger about except a suss looking bloke having a durrie on the front porch. This, folks, is Nugget, boss of the joint and he watches me get off Super Ten then disappears inside. By the time I’m at doorway he’s sorted a glass of water and is asking me what I’d like to chase it with. I grab a Furphy, confident it’ll not be my last for the night. Nuggett’s into his second year here after turning his back on the ‘smoke’ “ I was managing pubs and clubs in Cairns and when I finished with the them I decided to get a real job and headed to Brisbane and stayed with Telstra for 18 years and paid off a house in Hamilton and then bought the blue van. Then I headed down to Wodonga to spend some time with mum and dad who live down there. Then I got a call from an old mate who had a pub he needed someone to look after at Corowa so I’d drive from Wodonga to Corowa each day and I did that for about 8 months and then ...